1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a portable polisher, especially to an optical fiber end face polisher with a continuous polishing medium.
2. Description of the Prior Art
A conventional polisher is used to clean and polish end faces of optical fibers, specifically those of the optical fibers to be connected to each other, in order to prevent transmission loss and to achieve industrially required cleanness for expectable performance of the connected optical fibers.
The conventional polisher has a probing point through which a polishing string is guided from a supplying reel through a point of a rod for polishing an end face of an optical fiber and then led backward to a spooling reel. The rod is operably connected to a retractable assembly in which the reels are installed. When the point of the rod presses against the end face of the optical fiber, the rod pushes the assembly backward so as to rotate the spooling reel by a linear driving structure engaging a coaxial gear attached to the spooling reel. As the polishing string from the supplying reel runs through the end face of the optical fiber, impurities which may have attached to the end face are carried away with the polishing string to the spooling reel and thus the end face of the optical fiber is polished.
The aforementioned linear driving structure of the conventional polisher is a sequence of teeth formed linearly on an inner surface of the assembly so as to radially engage teeth of the coaxial gear. The linear driving structure and the gear, however, may easily disengage from each other when the conventional polisher is subjected to an accidental shock along the axial direction, which immediately results in a failed conventional polisher.
Considering the environments and conditions in which a portable optical fiber end face polisher is employed, it is foreseeable that a conventional polisher would often encounter unintended and accidental shocks.
The assembly of the linear driving structure and the gear is covered inside the assembly of the conventional polisher, which makes it very difficult for a user to visually distinguish a failed polisher from a functioning one, whereby the user may not be aware of the non-functioning of the conventional polisher until the polisher is to be used in a place where no replacement polisher is available.
Furthermore, the spooling reel has two opposite ends and two toothed-wheels respectively attached to the ends, whereby the toothed-wheels are of different shapes for respectively engaging a check pawl of a case receiving the assembly and a detent means defined on a bottom surface of the gear. The supplying reel also employs similar structure that has two toothed-wheels. The structures of the reels lead to confusion and ineffectiveness since during the assembling process, a reel may be reversely mounted to the conventional polisher for which neither of the toothed-wheel function as designed.
To overcome the shortcomings, the present invention provides a portable optical fiber end face polisher to mitigate or obviate the aforementioned problems.